Daydreaming used to be considered a waste of time but thanks to recent scientific research it seems that quite the opposite is true.

According to Greek neuroscientist Dr. Emmanuel A Stamatakis and his team of researchers at the University of Cambridge, daydreaming is a process that actually helps the brain deal more efficiently with the task at hand. It does so by triggering the mind to enter the so-called default mode network (DMN) which is a pattern of brain activity that occurs when we are not focusing on anything in particular.

In a study that was published on October 23 in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Dr Stamatakis’ scientific team presented significant evidence indicating that the DMN plays an essential role in allowing us to perform menial or familiar tasks without much mental effort, a state that is commonly described as “switching to autopilot.”

The DMN, which was characterized by Dr. Stamatakis as one of the two main workhorses of cognition, was first identified by scientists at Washington University. It is also referred to as default network or default state network and it is an extensive brain network of interacting brain regions whose activity is highly correlated with each other while it is distinct from other networks in the brain.

Current research shows that the DMN is a brain mechanism that allows us to maintain our mental health while its breakdown may precipitate the manifestation of several psychiatric conditions including schizophrenia and dementia.

Dr. Emmanuel Stamatakis is an expert in the neuroscience of anesthesia. He completed his PhD at the University of Dundee, Scotland where he developed image processing algorithms for the interpretation of medical images. He moved to the Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge in 2001 and since March 2008 he has been conducting research which involves functional and structural connectivity analyses as means to investigating organisation and reorganisation in the human brain.

Source: thegreekobserver.com